Monday, March 09, 2009

E M Cioran on Samuel Beckett

He lives not in time but parallel to it, which is why it has never occurred to me to ask him what he thinks of events. He is one of those beings who make you realize that history is a dimension man could have done without.

Ho, ho, ho!By the way, with 3 others I was politely shown the door at Harry's Place for remarking too loudly on a curious smell emanating from the kitchens. I mean Harry's Place on Canal Grande as opposed to Harry's Dolci across the water. But I also know of the establishment you are thinking of. I have posted the odd reply there but no longer do so as I'm liable to be Rottweilered.I didn't know HP had already disingegrated into a catastrophe but the graffito has been on the toilet door for some time, in fact since the $$$ crisis hit us all in the old sky-rocket.

"It's a feckin' catastrophe say Sam at last". This quote, just for the record, was Beckett's reply on learning he'd won the Nobel Prize. The adjective is mine. But in the poem it has a double meaning for it refers also to Neil Armstrong's balls-up on the moon. It was the same year - 1969.

Irish Independent Centenary Magazine (1905-2005):News BriefsOctober 24, 1969The Irish playwright Samuel Beckett has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His reaction upon hearing the news was to grunt "catastrophe". The Irish Independent reports that the writer is in Tunisia leading "a paranoid, peripatetic existence, moving from hotel to hotel, encased in anonymity."